Rename Weight Classes?

[7437]

I could easily see most HW's that weigh 250 or less cutting to 225. Would be an interesting division.

No it wouldnt. It would be the lighter heavyweights. If there is one division that doesnt need to be made more shallow, its heavyweight. There would be what, 5 people fighting at real HW after that?

 

[ferrisjso]

This is a horrible idea. UFC started with one division for everyone. Then it had the HW's, LHW's and WW's and expanded to MW and LW. Now with the integration of the WEC classes and FLW everything's fine. There's too many belts as there is don't make more especially at the top HW and LHW have such a small amount of fighters anyway it would make both titles meaningless. If you had to do this it would be lower with LW's, WW's and MW's as basically a majority of UFC fighters come from those divisions. But it shouldn't be done keep things as they are.

 

[Bigj383]

It hit it's pinnacle a 2-3 years ago, I don't think it's expanding at least here in the US. The fad died down.

World wise growth not US growth. Though ppvs were making more money a few years ago there is more MMA availwble now.

NPR finacial was talking about it after the maywhether fight. They said despite the huge sucess of the maywhether fight boxing as a whole is losing the audience. Their 18-34 is getting smaller and smaller. Though boxing still has an audience they are mostly middle aged to elderly people. So their audience is literally dying off. While UFC picks up more and more of the younger audience and is gaining a greater audience overseas. So no UFC and MMA are not on the decline.

 

[ManofSteel]

I am not buying the "can't change now" argument... not only did it go from no weight classes, to lightweight/heavyweight, then they removed lightweight, re-added it, made a middleweight division and so on...

In my opinion, this would help with casual fan appeal, make more sense generally and just sound better. Featherweight sounds tiny as hell and lightweight is not much better.

 

[bambammccoy]

No.. Just no. If you're gonna do anything then it would be make 206-225 a Cruiserweight division.. Don't rename other weight classes.

I feel that division would have been so interesting. Guys like Couture, Big Nog, Mirko, would have done amazing in.

Stipe, Barry, Cormier, Jordan, Vera.. Hell I could even see Big Country getting a diet together to be in that weightclass.

I could see that division sparking nicely.

 

[ManofSteel]

Also kind of ironic you guys are all against change considering we have women now and Dana said about 2 months ago they were thinking about a 115 lbs division to help entice Asia and Latin America...

 

[HIMBOB]

Cruiser weight would be interesting but would largely come at the sacrifice of the Heavyweight div so a no from me. Maybe in time this could work but not for some time yet.



I do think they should have followed the boxing methodology for weight classes but its kind of too late for that now and will just confuse people if they rename and LW becomes WW, it could work if they create all new names for the divs but again not worth it.

 

[Lucifer Alpha]

I hope they make a million weight divisions so that the UFC and its fans will be forced to focus on the fighters and not the weight classes. That's the only good thing about boxing's alphabet soup of champions.

 

[ithinktheymad]

Keep them all the same, if anything, add a cruiserweight 206-225.

They added way too many weight classes in the lower divisions. Would stop a lot of the massive cutting making for better fights.

 

[SherdogGoat]

If the word Heavy appeals you so much, how about Very HW , Heavy LHW, Heavy MW, Heavy WW, Heavy LW, Heavy FW, Heavy BW and Heavy FLW

 

[JustinvR]

i agree with this, The Size of featherweights and Lightweights are kinda the size of the average men if they would work out like MMartists(its closer to ww in most northern/western european countries but still). But when people hear featherweight and lightweight they think of small men. especially if they are familiar with boxing, because in boxing 147lbs is called Welterweight and in MMA its called Featherweight for example.

 

[trendkill101]

Wouldn't be opposed to this.

You would be when you realized both weight classes had become less deep than the flyweight division.

 

[wasp]

I believe marketing the classes in this way will appeal far better to casual fans and in my opinion, make more sense in terms of meaning.

Casual fans don't give a flying fuck about the name of the weight class.